


Which World?  This World!

by ChibiSquirt



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Witch World - Andre Norton
Genre: Alpha Darcy Lewis, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Darcy Lewis-centric, Dubious Consent, F/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, SHIP DARCY WITH ALL THE THINGS, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Timelines changed, canon-typical bigotry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-01 01:08:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12145278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChibiSquirt/pseuds/ChibiSquirt
Summary: When the Rainbow Bridge breaks, Darcy finds herself flung through the impossible void and lands...  Well, actually she has no clue where she lands, but there's a lot of grass and no people, so she's pretty sure it's going to be a challenge.  Priorities are:  shelter, water, food.  She manages the first two and is contemplating the third when a young Omega, on the precipice of Heat, stumbles into her cave.Okay, so therearepeople here.  Cool.This fic does not require prior knowledge of the Witch World series.  Which is a good thing, because Darcy has never read them.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding that pun in the title: I'm so sorry. If it helps, I'm actually an immortal vampire who feeds on the groans of the unwary who fall victim to such puns. 
> 
> What I'm NOT sorry for is publishing this particular descent into Id Fic. And it IS Id fic, of the best/worst "throw my faves together until they bang" variety. Look at the tags. Then know that Darcy and Keris are my two irrational faves. (This is in contrast to my rational faves, who are Steve Rogers and Simon Tregarth. Look, I have a type, alright? And that type is 'introverted badass guy.' I am a simple woman.) 
> 
> Quick note about ages at the end, for those who worry about that.

The rainbow bridge was broken, and it hurt to breathe.  And... 

Nope; no  _and,_ there.  Those were the only two things Darcy knew.

“Fuck,” she whispered, “Fuck, fuck,  _fuck!”_

The rainbow bridge was broken.  She had been there, she had  _seen it_ break.  She had heard Jane cry out as that giant wolf-thing—Fenrir?  Mythology suggested wolf-thing might have been Fenrir—snapped the bridge in half.  Lady Sif, who had thrown her clear of the wolf-thing’s snapping jaws and onto the bridge, had been beside her for a moment, the two of them crouching together, tangled in a swirl of colors before the wolf-thing’s teeth had closed and the snap and whiplash of the breaking gate had sent them whirling together into the void.

And now Sif was gone, and Darcy was well and truly lost.

She hugged her aching chest—she was pretty sure the difficult breathing came from her trying to breathe in a  _vacuum,_ and that was just ten billion kinds of awful that she was  _not thinking about right now—_ and tried to get to her feet.  After a couple of false starts, she even managed it.

She stood on a gently-sloped hill, surrounded by what she would have thought were Stonehenge if it weren’t for the fact that she had  _been_ to Stonehenge, and this was  _not it._ Around her, the grass spread out on an endless see of identical rolling hills—beautiful, waving, with patches tinting gently towards blue, like Kentucky, or purple, like Scotland.  

And... that was it.  No forests, no structures, no—

Wait.  

Okay, so off... that-a-way, whichever direction that-a-way was... there were some mountains.  Very, very far away mountains.  With suspiciously white tops.

Darcy spun in a circle, studying the horizon more closely, and discovered a hazy patch of darkness on the edge of of the sea of grass, opposite the mountains, which she thought might be a forest.  She made a face to herself, holding up her hands in front of her as she weighed the difference, and then started walking.

Possible-forest it was.

 

* * *

 

Okay, terminology point:  possible-forest was now neither relegated to potential, nor a forest.  Instead, it was actual—Darcy stared up at the giant trunks which toward over her with more than a little trepidation—and it wasn’t exactly a forest.

She would call it more of a  _jungle,_ really.

She hesitated there on the edge of the forest for a good long while.  It wasn’t like she had any particular  _calling_ to enter the forest, after all.  She didn’t even particularly  _want_ to.  It was just that she didn’t have any  _other_ indication of direction, either; this place was...  well, it wasn’t  _completely_ barren, but it was barren  _enough._

_Maybe I don’t really have to go in._

But she did, and she knew it.  Her legs were aching, and her back was sore; she was sweaty all over, but particularly along her face and neck, and her hair was clinging to her skin something awful.  Her legs had been protected during her long walk towards the  ~~forest~~  jungle by the loose jeans she was wearing, but nothing, it turned out, was protecting her legs from the jeans, and the chafing was becoming  _problematic._ The sun was hot, and while Darcy always slathered SPF-5,000,000 on her face in the morning— _thank you, New Mexico, for that particular lesson—_ that morning had been, by a rough estimate, over fifteen hours ago, between the various world-jumps, and judging by the light it was still early afternoon.

Basically, Darcy needed shade, and water, and not to be wearing pants, and she was way more likely to get all three of those in the jungle than out here on the plains.  

Even if, up close, the jungle  _did_ look awfully forbidding.

There were probably snakes.

Darcy shuddered, and then clenched her jaw.  No one else was there to do it for her, after all; she would just have to do it herself.  

 _Maybe I could just stick to the_ edges  _of the jungle..._

 

* * *

 

To her surprise, she actually could.  

She entered the jungle in the first opening she saw, and then cautiously picked her way through the unknown flora, stepping over vines and ferns, and keeping an eye out for creepy-crawlies.  She kept the sunlit sea of grass on her left, and just tried to keep within about twenty yards of it.  To her surprise, this worked on a couple of levels:  not only did she have a (very rudimentary) navigational tool, but there was more a path near the edge of the jungle than she had been expecting.  

Her stomach rumbled, and Darcy dithered.  

The problem was, although there were obvious, brightly colored fruits hanging from the trees overhead, she didn’t dare to eat them—not yet.  She had no way of knowing if they were poisonous or not, but if toxic plants and animals were, as she had always been told, more brightly colored, things weren’t looking good.  After several hours in the hot sun, she needed water—and the humidity which made the air thick and heavy wasn’t helping that—but still, she didn’t dare try the fruit, and her stomach rumbled and turned unhappily.

The smell wasn’t helping, either.  It had actually been pleasant when she first entered the jungle, the heavy, passion-fruity scent of the flowers mixing with the sort of bright green smell of the ferns.  But as she had continued on, the green, fern-like smell had grown stronger and stronger, until it almost seemed like it curled around her, as if every third step brought a new wave of it.  Her head pounded, pounded under the onslaught of it.

Overhead, birds twittered, called, shouted, whistled... The noise was astonishing.  She kept her eyes peeled, and spotted a pair of what looked like monkeys swinging overhead, only for them to stop, mid-swing, and exchange a tender hug before going about their—she grinned mentally—monkey-business.  She had to smile at the sight, exhausted and frustrated as she was; there was just something so charming about the two animals pausing in their day to love each other...  

Darcy rubbed at her ribs, along the left side where her soulmark rested.  A sight like that one, it was just fundamentally uplifting, that was all.  It gave a girl hope that there were good things after all in the world...  or at least, in  _this_ world.

 And with that thought lightening her steps, Darcy continued to make her way in the direction she was arbitrarily calling south, the alternative—the endless sea of grass—always stretching away on her left.

 

* * *

 

She found a cave about two-thirds of the way through what was—she was mostly guessing, here—this world’s afternoon.  The ground had been sloping gently upward for about half an hour when she came upon it, a tumble of boulders seemingly dumped on the ground out of nowhere, right before an enormous precipice.  It looked...  Darcy turned towards the grass sea, imagining it, but it really did look almost exactly as if someone had set up an enormous pile of bowling pins, and then forgotten to roll the ball until a forest grew up around the pins, anchoring them into place.  

An exhausted smile lit her face at the mental image, and, pulling down and re-fastening her hair into a more stable arrangement which would maybe lessen the pounding in her skull, she picked her way towards the cliff face to see if there were any way down.  

There was one, too:  a small, fragile path, but manageable.  At least on foot—if she had been riding anything, though, from motorcycle to horse to mountain goat, she would have been screwed.  

About fifty feet straight down from the Bowling Pins, she found two surprises, both of which made her heart pound in her chest:  the cave... and signs of a camp.

The cave was a godsend.  Sheltered, secure as anything was out here, and, miracle of miracles, a tiny waterfall trickled through the back of it, obviously making its way down to the river at the bottom of the gorge Darcy was descending.  

Darcy splashed water on her face, and then, after a moment of thought, stripped off her shirt, unhooked her bra, and washed her pits, too.  She didn’t put the clothes back on; instead, she rinsed them in the stream as best she could and draped them over some nearby rocks to dry.  This cave was the best place to rest she had seen all day, hell if she was leaving it any time soon; she might as well go full wild-woman and leave the girls out.  Besides, like any Alpha, she gave off a lot of scent; no point in letting it build up more than she had to.

The cave wasn’t chilly—in the humidity, it was the opposite of that—but she wasn’t sure how long the heat would last once the sun went down.  And she wanted a weapon.  It would have been nice to have had a fire... 

There were marks on the walls, she realized suddenly.  She had been staring at them for five minutes not realizing what they were, but as soon as she thought of fire, it clicked.  Those shadows, the ones that got darker towards the roof of the cave...  They were soot marks!  Her heart leaped into her throat, and she jumped to her feet again.  

Before everything with Thor and Jane and Asgard and Sif that morning—now most of a day ago—she had been wearing a sweater to ward off the chill in the lab; in the grass, she had tied it around her waist to avoid losing it, and since it was fairly clean, she had left it unwashed.  She donned it now: the last thing she needed was some asshole coming on her sitting with her tits out.

That done, she approached the wall, peering more closely at the soot marks.  Apart from coming off on her fingers, making an awful mess and confirming via scent that, yes, they were the signs of a fire, they gave forth no clearer answers.  She had no idea how long ago they had been left, how many people had sheltered here—the cave was large, and would have fit nearly twenty—or what... what...

She paused, sniffing.

...what that  _incredibly_ good smell was...!

It had infiltrated the cave slowly, quietly undermining, and then toppling, the awful, intrusive, sickly-green fern-and-fruit scent which was making Darcy’s head pound so.  Except it wasn’t pounding anymore, Darcy realized, because the new scent was all around her, instead.  

It was something subtle, not like the ferny scent at all.  Something soft, like the crinkle at the corner of a man’s eye.  Something clean, rich but also refreshing, and only mildly sweet.  It smelled almost exactly like a hot, fresh cup of coffee, except that it  _actually_ smelled absolutely  _nothing_ like coffee.  

Darcy growled under her breath and tossed her hair before pulling the tangled mess, once again, into a messy bun on the top of her head.  She didn’t _really_ wonder what the smell was, although that had been her first reaction.  It may have been the first time she had ever smelled this particular scent, but she still knew exactly what it was.  Knew it in her  _bones._

This was the smell of an Omega.

Specifically, an Omega  _in_   _Heat._


	2. Chapter 2

Darcy was stuck in a cave with no bra on, her hair and self a mess, and absolutely exhausted from what was essentially interuniversal jet lag.  She was also starving, although at least she had managed to slake her thirst at the trickle of water in the back of the cave.  The point was, she wasn’t exactly the most appealing Alpha in the world.  

Or, you know, maybe she was. Since she had no idea what was even  _on_ this world.

She groaned and let her head fall back on her neck, but there was really no point in fighting it.  There was no other exit from the cave; once the Heat hit fully, there was no rejecting it (without, like, restraints, she guessed); and even if she did manage to reject the Heat long enough to get out of the cave, she was pretty sure she wasn’t wood-wise enough to escape the Omega currently finding their way directly to her hidey-hole. 

No, whoever that was out there, they were outdoorsy enough to be making their way around the jungle—the same jungle which had baffled and intimidated  _Darcy—_ just fine.  Which meant she pretty much didn’t have a prayer.

And then there was the inconvenient fact that this was the first human—or, okay,  _probably_ human—person she had seen since coming to this world.  She had no other places to turn, and she wasn’t going to last out here on her own.  She needed their help, and as ways to get that went…

“Fuuuuuck,” she whined to herself.  

It was exactly what she was about to be:  fucked.

It wasn’t like she’d never had sex before; she was a healthy twenty-five year old allosexual, and reasonably attractive, and she’d gone to college for more than the standard four years, so hell yes, she had definitely had sex before, including quite a lot of casual, hook-up-style sex.  She had even had  _Heat_ sex before; her first boyfriend in college—the one she had erroneously thought she was going to marry—had been an Omega, one of the only ten percent of the male population who were.  He was an Omega, Darcy was a female Alpha…  She had figured they were meant to be.  

Spoiler alert?  Not so much.

So she did know what she was getting into.  Kinda, at least.   _It’s just that I don’t know who’s going to be getting into_ me, she thought tartly, and that did rather sum up the problem.

But there were crunching, crumbling sounds coming from the mouth of the cave–the sound of someone climbing the cliff face–and there was  _still_ nowhere to go, so once Darcy had pulled her hair up, there was nothing for her to do except wait, jiggling her knee and chewing her lip with nerves.

 

* * *

 

Things she had not expected to see here:  the Hulk.

Okay, it wasn’t the Hulk.  Or at least, she was pretty sure it wasn’t the Hulk; when she had seen him on TV, she hadn’t remembered the Hulk being particularly furry, which this guy definitely was.  He had a long, lustrous green coat that she suspected would be very welcome come nightfall.  He was like the Hulk, if the Hulk was normally a pit bull, and on this world was instead a golden retriever.

Luckily for pretty much all involved, Darcy was pretty sure the not-Hulk was not the Omega in this situation, because he was carrying with him a young man who looked almost eerily like a gray-eyed Keanu Reeves.  Dollars to doughnuts said that _this_ was the guy putting out the delicious, coffee-not-coffee scent.  

Which, honestly…  This could be worse.  Darcy had  _definitely_ fucked less attractive guys than this after a night of solid drinking, that was one thing for sure.  He was trimly built, reasonably clean—cleaner than she was by this point—with only light stubble and mid-length hair like Aragon or—

—well, or like Ted, from  _Bill and Ted,_ actually.  Not quite that fluffy, though.

He was also staring at her with the most shocked, appalled,  _betrayed_ look she had ever seen on another human’s face, including the time she had put ground-up Benedryl into Jane’s coffee to end a three-day science bender.  (Fun fact, humans developed immunity to caffeine if they drank it often enough!)

Darcy pasted on a smile and tried hard not to look pathetic, waggling her fingers at the newcomers in an exaggeratedly-cheerful wave.  “Hiiiii!”

Omega Guy shook his head, slowly, back and forth, in a total rejection of his reality.  Not Hulk beamed back at her as he put the Omega down on his feet.  “Gruck!” said Not Hulk, pointing to himself. 

“Yeah?” she asked.  She mentally shrugged and jerked a thumb at her chest.  “Darcy.”

Omega Guy didn’t say anything.  He just stared at her, shaking his head.  Gruck, who was  _totally_ Hulk’s second cousin once removed or something, smacked him lightly on the back of the head.

Omega Guy jumped and spit out a phrase in a language Darcy had never heard before.  It sounded kind of like Klingon had had a bastard lovechild with Welsh, though.

Gruck shook his—her? its?—head and leaned in a bit, mock-threatening.  Omega Guy rolled his eyes at Gruck—difficult, considering how tall Gruck was; Darcy was a kind of impressed—and turned to her with an obstinate expression.  “Keris,” he said shortly.  Then he added that same Welshon phrase again, which Darcy was going to go ahead and guess meant, “What the hell are you  _doing_ here.”

She spread her arms wide and grinned at him just to be annoying.  “No fucking clue, buddy!”

He must have understood her, because his expression turned even more sour.

Oh, yeah; this was gonna be a _great_ Heat.  

They were gonna have a goooood time.


	3. Chapter 3

“So let me guess,” Darcy started.  She pasted a confident, reassuring smile on, because this guy—Keris, apparently—seemed just about ready to spook.  “Your first Heat, right?”

He didn’t respond verbally.  She guessed that was fair, since there was no way he could understand what she was saying…  

Still.  

She leaned in, just a bit into his space, and took a long, deep sniff before raising her eyebrows pointedly.  She held up one finger.  “First time?”

He flushed, jerking his eyes away from her and staring at the ground, but he nodded.  

She nodded, too.  Then she took him very gently by the arm and steered them over to the mouth of the cave, pointing out the empty, civilization free wilderness that surrounded them.  

It was a heck of a view; the ravine whose wall the cave was in stretched out on either side, a brilliant, parrot-bright river careening cheerfully over the bottom.  Vines and ferns clogged the scraps of dirt clinging to the rocks, and birds swooped, forward and backwards, in front of them.  The setting sun was currently fitting itself into the notch of the ravine like a particularly hefty scoop of ice cream into a cone, and the jewel-colored light played over the rocks like an impressionist’s dream.  

There was no sign of civilization anywhere, not for miles.  She spread her arm out like Vanna White, then turns to him and held her arms very far apart.  “Nobody,” she observed.

He shook his head, and said something in that other language before remembering she wouldn’t be able to understand.  Instead, he gestured to her and repeated her move, leaning in and sniffing pointedly, before shaking his head and spreading his hands sharply, palms down, obviously a negation.

“You didn’t want somebody like me,” she guessed.  “No Alphas.”

He narrowed his eyes, apparently not sure she had understood.  Darcy pursed her lips in frustration, then held up her arm vertically with her hand curled into a fist on the end.  She made her thumb move like a mouth, accompanying it with muppet-noises.   _“Nyah-nah-nah-nah-nah,”_  her fist said, and she side-eyed Keris to be sure he understood.  

Keris was looking at her like she was a crazy person, which, okay:  fair.  She rolled her eyes and leaned in, biting her wrist like it was a neck.   _“Oooooh!”_  cried her fist.  

It may also have swooned a bit.  

She raised her eyebrows again.  “No, right?”

Keris was glaring.  Keris was glaring at her  _so hard._ But, even as a muscle ticked in the side of his jaw, he nodded, grudgingly.  A single word in a tone of agreement came from him; she was guessing it meant  _no._

Darcy nodded again, pleased that communication was coming on so well, and then turned toward the open mouth of the cave again.  She gestured dramatically at it.  “Get out,” she suggested.  “Go.  Git.  Vamoose.”

An expression of despair crossed Keris’s face, and he very obviously looked like he wanted nothing more than to follow her advice.  Instead, though, he held up his fist just as she had.  Muppet-noises in the local dialect were apparently “ _ay-yai-yai-yai-yai,”_ she was amused to discover, and then Keris’s other hand tackled the first with an animal snarl, and Keris’s first hand died messily with several agonized death-cries.

Darcy nodded, resigned.  “Only safe place for miles,” she interpreted.  “Gotcha.”

She studied the young man—seriously, how old  _was_ this guy?  Obviously old enough for a Heat, but it was his first Heat, so how old was that?  But on the other hand, there was a certain gravity to the way he held himself—even when his fist was dying in agony, it was dying with an almost Shakespearean sort of self-possession—that suggested he was older than his years.  

Darcy wiggled her fingers, an old nervous habit she usually hid in the oversized sleeves of her sweaters.  She nodded to herself, then looked Keris in the eye firmly.  “Okay,” she said clearly.  “Yes.”  

Keris’s eyes widened in surprise—and, she was guessing, more than a little bit of nerves.   _“Yes?”_ he repeated, obviously echoing rather than comprehending.

“Yes,” she said in a firm, Hermione Granger sort of voice.  “You.”  She pointed back and forth between them.  “Me.  Fucking.”  She made scissors of her fingers and banged them together in a crude but obvious gesture.  “It’s a yes.”  

The thing was, it wasn’t this guy’s  _fault,_ them being in this situation.  He couldn’t have known she would be here.  And it wasn’t  _her_  fault, either, because she couldn’t have known he was coming.  And he seemed nice—underneath all the glaring, he was at least good-humored—so, honestly,  _she_ was  _fine_ with this.  

If nothing else, she just wanted him to know that.  It seemed like it might be important.

He swallowed, and nodded, and looked away.  Then looked back without moving his head, just barely sneaking a glimpse out of the corner of his eye.  

He nodded again, as if to himself, and then swung to the side to point his finger at the hulking Gruck who stood, silently, nearby.  Keris said two sentences in his native tongue, both of them very short.  

Darcy frowned.  “Uhh, what?”  She wasn’t sure what was going on, but if it involved her fucking Gruck, she was going to seriously consider jumping down the cliff, because jumping down the cliff would probably be way easier on her nether regions; Gruck was fucking  _huge!_

Keris scowled, and then gestured at Gruck again, repeating both phrases.  The first was perhaps three or four words long; the second was only a single word, though, and Darcy found herself repeating it in a tone of confusion.  

Keris rolled his eyes at her and gestured to himself.  He sniffed deeply, then said another word, which Darcy quickly memorized because it obviously meant  _Omega._ He pointed at Darcy and repeated the gesture, this time saying his version of  _Alpha._ This time, when he pointed at Gruck, he sniffed, then sniffed again and again, rapidly, as if he had expected to smell something and couldn’t.

“Ohhhh,” Darcy said in dawning realization. “He’s you’re Beta!”  

This was old-school stuff, almost always skipped in modern Omegas—but then, modern O’s had the internet, and sex toys aplenty, and usually plenty of Omega friends, too.  Before, Omegas had been much more likely to be isolated, by their parents and by society, and the Heat Beta—also know as the Third Role—had come about.  

Historically, Alphas usually mated with Omegas; there were exceptions, but that was the generally-accepted rule.  Betas usually mated with each other, but occasionally joined an Alpha and an Omega to form a Triad.  Sometimes they played other roles, too—Alexander the Great had famously had a partner in the form of his best friend Hephaestion, a Beta—but mostly they fell into one of those two Roles.

The Third Role was found in almost all aristocracies, all over the world, but only rarely in the common folk.  A Third Role Beta usually joined a (virgin) Omega for their Heat, not fucking them, but doing everything else:  keeping them fed and watered, helping them to the bathroom, wiping them down in between rounds…  They also officially called it when the Heat was beginning and ending.  A lot of times, a Third Role Beta had been the O’s nanny when they were a kid; it was a very  _non-_ sexual position.  

The Third Role was a  _thing_ because aristocrats didn’t like their O’s to have taken a knot (or a clench, Darcy guessed) before, but Darcy kind of thought that was some patriarchal bullshit.  Still, if it meant Keris could have Gruck there and didn’t expect Darcy to tear her vagina to shreds riding him, she was good to go.  “Cool,” she said, flashing Keris a thumb’s up.

Keris blinked in surprise and grinned, flashing it back.  

God, he was good-looking when he wasn’t brooding, wasn’t he?

He nodded as if he’d heard the thought, the grin sliding off his face and worry scratching a line between his brows.  He was obviously still off-balance, afraid and bitter that she was going to be his first Heat companion.  He probably hadn’t even been ready for a companion  _at all;_ that was probably a good part of why he was out in the middle of nowhere for this!

Darcy smiled sympathetically, but there was no going back now, was there?  She remembered him miming being attacked in the middle of his Heat.  His left hand had given a very realistic snarl; this was a man who knew what dangers lurked in the night, and Darcy would bet dollars to doughnuts she wasn’t equipped to handle any of them.  

Her taser only had the one charge, she remembered with a shiver.  Better make it count.

So yeah:  no getting out of it now.  

She took a deep breath and stepped closer to Keris.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeta'ed, so if you see a typo, please speak up. (I just noticed tonight that there was an error in the summary, which... great...) 
> 
> The Witch World books are written in this really old-fashioned style, and I've tried to capture some of that here. My in-fic explanation is that the language Keris is using is itself more old-school; Darcy talks like she usually does, and I'm going to try to keep the Keris-POV chapters to a minimum, because this style is actually kind of a pain in the butt to write in. 
> 
> But, I mean, it's fic, and it's meant to be enjoyable. If the archaic-ness of the language is driving you bonkers, feel free to drop me a (respectful) note saying that! Also, I know no one reads these things and I'm working really hard to make sure everything is clear. But if something *isn't* clear, please say that, too, and I'll either edit the chapter or throw up an author's note to explain it.
> 
> The porn should be either next chapter or the one after, depending on how long I spend negotiating to keep it not-too-rapey.

If luck were measured in dice rolls, Keris reflected, then he had surely rolled a one at every possible opportunity.

Bad enough to be born talentless, void of the magical Gift which otherwise so thoroughly permeated his family tree.  To be asked at every turn to produce evidence of an ability he plainly lacked; to be viewed as a failure, as  _less-than,_ when he failed to produce that proof.  Over and over again, he had been a disappointment, although had he been born to any other family he would have been such a son as to make his lord proud.  

He had escaped that, finally, when he was chosen for this expedition:  a group to seek out, and close, all of those Gates through which travelers from other worlds had in the past—and would in the future—come.  

In this company, he had acquitted himself well, and had been held in high enough esteem among his new peers.  It was a heady draught to someone who had never drunk the like before, and the proof of it had only risen after Keris had played a crucial roll in a last-minute gambit to save the world.  

For a precious two months, he had been happy.

He reflected on that time now with a bitter twist of his mouth, because in all earnest, he should have known it couldn’t last.

Keris was not the youngest in the expedition; that would be the young witch called Mouse, who for all her magical power was not yet ten years of age.  But he had still been a stripling when they left the Lormt, having only sixteen winters behind him at that time.  His eighteenth winter, though now passed, could hardly claim the name, having been spent in this warm southern land so mild that he hadn’t even reckoned the passing time until he counted it up on his fingers.

Near that too-mild midwinter of his eighteenth year, however, he had started developing a tenderness of the back and sides of his neck, and when he touched it, the skin had begun to feel strangely smooth.  Before sprint hit, he had begun to show the boil-like growths of Sitemarks.

Keris’s father was an Alpha.  So, too, were his mother and his sister—although female Alphas were usually rare.  In all of Keris’s well-documented family tree, in fact, there was only one Omega: the adept Hilarion, who had married Keris’ aunt Kaththea.  No one, from his family to the people of the Green Valley to the expedition in whose ranks he now rode, had expected Keris to be an Omega.  He had been runt enough as a Beta!

And, to put the final touches on a masterpiece of misfortune:  he was more than a year’s travel distant from home, but to judge from the shiny purple skin of his Sitemarks, he had less than two months before his first Heat was upon him.

The members of his expedition were a motley collection, but one thing was true of all of them: they were all Betas, except for Destree, whose Heats were blighted by the goddess Gunnora—and, as it was now known, for Keris.  This was deliberate:  with an unknown distance before them, a Heat or the rarer Rut would have been a risk too great to be borne.  But it meant that Keris was effectively stranded, thousands of miles from home and surrounded by neither an Alpha to bond him nor an Omega to comfort him, to guide him as his body changed.

The one comfort available to him was this:  their force had reached the furthest extent of their journey, and begun the long retreat back towards Lormt, towards the Citadel, towards home.  And, too, their meandering path meant that, although the trip outward had taken some sixteen months, the return journey would be at most half of that—potentially less.  The rules regarding those in Keris’s station were clear; even now, having received word of this development, Keris’s parents would be arranging a position for him, undignified though he found it; and within a year, he would be most certainly be ensconced comfortably—or as comfortably as he could hope for, at least—in the household of some Alpha lord.  

But he had to make it home, first, and unaccompanied Heats were said to be trials of the highest order.  Keris, with no guide and no mate, had no choice but to rub feverishly at the burning knots in his neck, and worry endlessly at the worrisome drips which then, inevitably, turned out to be mere sweat.

They raced northward, but he knew before it happened that they would never make it back in time, and indeed they did not.  

He woke that morning comfortable.  His first inkling of the problem came when he surveyed their camp and realized that he was the only one; even the horses were stamping, their breaths streaming in the early-morning chill.  It was a spring day, and to judge from the past week it would be hot later; Keris had simply assumed that the warmth was natural.

Natural, perhaps, but not shared, and his heart sank as he climbed to his feet and felt the tell-tale dampness around his smallclothes.  He hoped, grimly, that it was simply more sweat, but he knew that it was not, and the speed with which Krispin stepped back from him as he approached their fire told Keris that his scent must have ripened, sharpening abruptly over the course of the night.

The lady Eleeri was already awake, sipping a concoction brewed from local flora; the giant Gruck, who had been trapped in their world by the closing of a Gate, was beside her, stirring slowly at a bowl of porridge with a utensil from his belt—the only kind suited to his giant hand.  On the other side of Gruck sat the lady Liara and the witch-girl Mouse.

Liara had barely said a word to Keris since the Sitemarks appeared, one more blow of fortune from which he shied rather than consider it too deeply.  Mouse, however, looked up and addressed both him and the issue with her customary pragmatism.  “You will have to leave camp,” she said bluntly.

“I am aware.”  Keris found he could not quite meet her eyes, nor anyone else’s, as he accepted a mug into which Eleeri had just ladled hot water.  He set it down on a rock and himself beside it, but then edged away; the steam was too hot on his already clammy skin.

He considered the land through which they had passed some four months previously; he had always been quick with maps, and their path in this region had been straightforward enough.  

“There is a cave,” he began.  They had sheltered their entire group, including the horses and other four-legged companions, in that cave, which was well-ventilated and had a fresh spring of water.  They had found it on the way south, a refuge during a truly hellish descent which, thankfully, was now some distance out of their way.  

It would serve, provided his scent did not attract any predator he was too mindless to defeat.

“Will you take a companion?” Eleeri asked this, her tone carefully neutral.  Like Keris, she did not turn her gaze on Liara after she spoke, instead keeping her face turned carefully in his direction.  

Keris smiled, the bitter unfairness of it rising to swamp him once again.  “We are precious short on Alphas here, Lady.”  He bit out the honorific, unwilling, even in his frustration, to be rude to one so worthy of respect.

Eleeri’s expression was wry, but sympathetic.  “I referred not to a mate,” she said gently, “but to a  _companion—_ there are many in camp who would be honored to serve in the Third Role for you.”

Keris imagined briefly asking Krispin, who had stepped away so instinctively, to accompany him, and his gorge rose.  “Many,” he repeated flatly.  “Not yourself; not your husband.  The Falconers are mated; Destree is an Omega, though she suffers not from the—”

He broke off sharply.  Liara had risen abruptly to her feet, departing their circle without a word.  He watched the straight line of her spine retreat, and tried to quell the small voice railing inside him against the loss.

“No,” he concluded, “I think you are wrong.  I will not find ‘many’ in the camp to accompany me.  I will go alone.”

He tested the side of the metal cup; the rim, at least, was not so hot that he could not drink his flower-water.  He would have to take a pack, and they would need to set a rendezvous point...

A stack of large flower petals, each larger than Keris’s hand laid flat and all the colors of the sky at sunset, inserted themselves into his line of sight.  Blinking, Keris looked up—and up some more—into the friendly, inhuman face of the giant Gruck.  Gruck spoke very little aloud, but could project his thoughts into the minds of others, particularly those who were Sensitive—which Keris was not.  Still, he heard clearly the giant’s intent to accompany him during his absence from their caravan. 

For the second time that morning, Keris felt his throat close.  This time, however, it was warmth which caught his breath, warmth at the kindness of one who wasn’t even human, and yet would still take this journey with him.  Keris hadn’t even left camp, yet already he was filled with a sense of shame and bitterness at the ordeal he was to face; but still Gruck, that silent, gentle guardsman, was prepared to stand at his side throughout.  

“Do you know what will happen?” Keris asked.  He stared up into those green eyes with a sense of bewilderment.  “Do you even know what’s going to—”

“I’ll make sure he knows.”  

Keris jerked back to see that Destree had risen, listening to their conversation from directly behind him.  

“But he understands on the most basic level.”  And then, when Keris opened his mouth to object, she added, “He understands that you will be vulnerable, and he understands that you are his friend.  Indeed, I would say that you are his favorite friend, of all those gathered here.”  She swung her head in a half-circle to indicate their camp, and then gestured at the flower petals still held in front of Keris’ chest.  “Eat your breakfast,” she advised.  “You are going to need it.”

 

* * *

The cave was but half a day of hard riding from their path, but Keris was not going on a horse.  For one thing, no horse ever born would manage to bear Gruck’s weight; for another, the cave was up so steep an incline that they and the horse would almost perforce be separated.  And so, instead, they crossed the distance on foot, with Gruck managing Keris’ pack.

No one had told him how long he would have before the true fever-mindlessness of the Heat broke over him; it wasn’t something discussed in polite company.  He made the best pace he could, and trusted that Gruck would carry him if he lost control before they had scaled the cliff.

Still, he remained reasonably self-controlled by the time they started that final climb.  There was a jungle at the top of the cliff, some three hours of rough, hairpin trail between him and it; Gruck would hunt there, and moreso scavenge there, as he was far more inclined towards the eating of plants than creatures.  The cave would have water, and shelter; there was a blanket, soap, and spare clothes in his pack, along with a strange rod-like device shoved in wordlessly by a blushing Destree.  

It would be enough.  All he had to do was reach the cave.  

He was soon sweating heavily, though.  Twice his hands slipped in their own slickness as he went to grab the divots in the rock face which served as handholds, and within minutes Gruck was half-carrying him up the switch-backing trail.  

Much to his own mortification, Keris could smell himself.  He smelled burned, like scorched oats, and almost sulfurous to his own nose, although Gruck waved off his babbled apologies.  There was also another, sweeter smell, underlying the first one.  Keris found it  _too_ sweet, and his cheeks burned with shame at the thought of it.  

He couldn’t seem to stop sniffing for it, though.  He would catch a whiff of it--too sweet, like powder old women wore in the summer--and then wrinkle his nose, but the knowledge of it would itch like a mosquito bite and soon he would sniff again.  

It was in this manner that he became aware of the third scent.

If his sent was sulfur and powder, the third scent was anything but.  It was leather and fresh, clean grass; it was a cool stream and light summer wine—a red from the mountain slopes north of Karsten.  And it was—

It was—

Keris moaned aloud, finally identifying the scent he hadn’t smelled in nearly two years, and certainly never like this.  

There was an Alpha in the cave.  His luck, ever bad, had just showed itself again.  

He made to struggle in Gruck’s hold—to his fevered mind, the steep fall down the cliff was a perfectly viable option for escape—but Gruck’s hold was true, and no more than a minute after Keris had scented the Alpha, they were passing the lip of the cave.

The Alpha was a woman—Keris knew himself truly enough to acknowledge the brief rush of gratitude, although it did little to change his fate—and strong of feature.  Keris thought that she would have been lovely even had he been properly minded to tell, but of course he was not.  He would have thought the lady Theela quite lovely in that moment, and while the lady Theela was brilliant in mind, in her body she was, quite bluntly, a horse.  Still, her form was as curvaceous as that of any of the great beauties of Kars, and her skin pale and flawless.

She did not seem to struggle for words the Keris did, either; rather, she raised her hand and waggled her fingers in obvious greeting.  She pasted on a wide smile and called out with only the slightest of quavering,  _“Hiiii!”_


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up, this chapter slightly changed from what was posted on Tumblr, because I forgot about their soulmarks.

Keris had traveled miles out of the way in order to find safe haven during his Heat, and yet somehow he had managed to stumble into an Alpha regardless.  He wanted to fume and rage, but could not at this juncture manage to rouse the necessary anger.  Instead, he stood numb, feeling nothing but dismay and otherworldiness at the revelation.  

He fought back the urge to spit over the ledge—an old-fashioned superstition for throwing off bad luck—and directed his attention to the Alpha.  

She appeared friendly enough:  she introduced herself willingly, and her gaze was clear and direct as she did so.  Her eyes were pale blue, and her smile wide.  She was also clever in her attempt to communicate, although Keris resented her characterization of the Omega being bitten as quite so helpless.  But she surmised that this was his first Heat readily enough, and understood properly that he was displeased to have an Alpha there.

In truth, he would have had no objection to her presence, had things been otherwise.  He had been raised as a warrior, having believed full-heart that that was his destiny, and a warrior knows women.  It was only his attachment to the expedition that had prevented him from knowing any before now, and she was certainly an attractive enough specimen.

It was the fact that she was an Alpha, and an Alpha present while he was in Heat, that was giving him pause.  Or—no true pause, for he felt already the thready beat of his heart, felt the quickening in his loins, and knew that there would be no stopping.  But still:  he would have been a sorcerer like all the rest of his family, save he had no Gift; he would have been a warrior, save he was an Omega; and now, he would have been assigned to some noble lord, either of Estcarp or abroad, as need, save he was apparently to be claimed by a total stranger in a cave in the wilderness, instead.  

Truly, he had no luck at all.

On the other hand, he reflected, he would have been no more familiar with whatever lord claimed him, had things gone according to the new plan, than he was with this Darcy, now.  A common language, yes, but no previous acquaintance was likely.  And Darcy acceded quickly and with good humor to his demand that Gruck stay, something no lordling would have tolerated.  

With that thought, the rest of his reservations evaporated, and he found a sudden weakness spreading through him, starting at the knees.  As Gruck tucked himself discretely into a seat on a nearby rock and Darcy stepped towards him, he found himself wavering where he stood.  It was only a clutching grip at the soot-covered wall behind him that saved him from toppling to the ground.  

She brushed up close, so that the tips of her breasts flattened slightly against Keris’s chest.  He couldn’t truly feel them through the chain mail and leather he was still wearing—a condition he suddenly, abruptly need to change, without delay—but still, their presence seemed almost hot against him, like two fresh teacups set to rest against his skin.   A shining beacon lit inside his mind and burned all other thoughts away; he needed her, on him, over him, and around him, and he needed her now.  

A faint, humiliating whine leapt forth from his lips, which trembled in the close, warm air of the cave.  Darcy raised up—truly, she was a miniature person; she must have been standing on her tip-toes—and peered into his face from as close as she could get, meeting his eyes.  Keris stared back, helpless in the strong currents of the wave off need that had swept him.  

She sought for something in his gaze, but he knew not what; whatever it was, she did not find it, and brought herself down to flat feet again.  She leaned forward, brushing her lips along the front of his throat, near one of the shiny purple nodules that were his Sitemarks.

Another sound burst out of him, and he couldn’t stop himself from pulling backwards with a startled jerk, slamming his head into the wall hard enough to sting like a whip-crack.  She jerked back, in turn, startled by the movement.  When she had stilled, she addressed him with a knowing, no-nonsense expression.  Moving more confidently now, her gestures smooth and controlled, she reached out and grasped his belt-buckle firmly, ignoring the faint flinch this evoked, and slid the leather tongue out of its loop.  

His breathing was coming faster, now, a running pace, rushing back and forth over his lips, like it had somewhere to be but no idea how to get there.  His heart beat a tattoo against the thick arteries in his neck as she slid the leather tongue through the frame of the buckle and then pulled, tugging faintly, until the belt slithered out of its loops and into her hands.  

The force-whip, knife, and pouches which hung from the belt tumbled to the ground with thumps and clanging sounds, unnoticed by either of them.

She stepped back once she had it, raising her eyes to his and the belt in her hands, and then, making sure he could see her do it, slid the leather up, and… under her hair?  He frowned.  Her hair was pulled back into a loose, unsecured braid which would surely shake itself out soon; she had inserted the belt underneath the heavy mass of it, pulling it around—

She was winding it around her neck, he realized.  With a startled jerk of his heart, he watched her lift the leather to her mouth, fitting it securely between her teeth, sucking at the leather a bit where it likely held his scent.  She was able, just barely, to wrap the length twice around her head, and then she adjusted it sideways so that the buckle was tucked beneath her left ear, and turned her head so he could fasten it for her.

He did so, his fingers trembling slightly in need—and also in shock.  

No one could have blamed her had she bitten him this night; indeed, any man of Estcarp would have declared it inevitable.  Unwilling and unable to stop it, he would have been bound to her side, or else to a lifetime of aching at her absence; it was one of the reasons he had chafed so at finding her in his cave!  But with two sinuous twists of leather, she had made herself unable to bite much of anything, much less his Sites, and she done so freely, a gift to him simply because she thought it was the right thing to do.  

When he had finished buckling the belt into place, he leaned his head against hers, pressing his lips to the soft, sweet-scented hair above her ear.  He hoped she understood what he meant.

She murmured soft words as she wrapped her arms around him, palms moving soothingly over his back.  He couldn’t speak her language, and with the belt gagging her neither could she, but the meaning was unmistakable, and he appreciated the kindness of it.  He breathed deep.  Her scent was impossibly strong, here, wine and leather and  _clean spring,_ so thick it seemed to coat his nose and tongue like honey.

“Shhh,” she said around the leather, brushing her hand down to cup the curve of his rear.  “Shhhh.”

Suddenly, that hand was all he could think about, all he could feel.  He gasped, his head falling back to expose his throat, and he realized a thick rush of shame at the wantonness of the gesture.  

She didn’t take it amiss, though, nor did she take it as a sign to unwind his belt from her lips.  Instead, she drew back slightly, and, with a gesture, urged him to begin shucking his mail and clothes.

He had done so more quickly in his life; the trembling in his fingers impeded his progress, the fumbling uncoordination making even the familiar motions to taking his shirt off into a trial.  But he had the most of it soon enough:  boots set against the wall with his stockings tucked safely inside, armor spread over a rock, and weapons, mostly retrieved from they had fallen when she took his belt off, piled on top.  Soon, apart from his mark-band low on his ankle, only his trousers and smallclothes remained.  They clung to his hips, but only barely.

He was breathing swiftly again, nerves at last overtaking the pulsing, sweet thickness of the Heat.  He was keenly aware of slickness trickling down the backs of his legs.  He was sure she could smell it.

Darcy stripped off her bulky, cozy-looking shirt, tugging at it when it caught on his belt under her ear and then throwing it across the room towards the mouth of the cave with a sort of abandon that made Keris smile in spite of his nerves.   A laugh lurked in her eyes, directed not at him or even at herself, but rather at both of them, and at the situation.  He caught the joke and his heart lightened, a laugh bursting out of him.  Feeling more confident, now, he sent first one button then another through their holes, loosening his flies.  

His eyes fell to her breasts, which were heavy and full and round, rounder than any he had ever seen before.  His vision blurred and focused; he could not look away, could not think of anything but touching that curved softness.  He swallowed and waved his hand a bare inch.  "May I…?”

She made an inviting, welcoming gesture, and he raised his hand, gently cupping the left one in his hand.  He winced at the feel of his calluses scraping against her so-soft skin, but Darcy seemed unbothered: she smiled gently and stepped closer, running her hand down his side to his hip, urging him to explore further.

The brush of his fingers across her skin brought a sigh, and he brought his other hand up, too, lifting them and bringing them together.  The cleft between them was so deep he felt his breath catch, and, unbidden, one of his thumbs scraped over one of her nipples.   

Truly, her hair could have lit on fire at that moment, and he would not have noticed.

She breathed in sharply at the touch, and pushed with the hand she had inserted beneath his belt-hem, sending his trousers and smallclothes tumbling together towards the ground so that he stood naked before her.  

She looked at him, assessing and evaluating, a challenge and a smile co-abiding in her eyes.  She liked what she saw, too, by all appearances:  her gaze lingered at the long lean muscles of his thighs, so sharply lined after over a year of travel, well-grown from riding; on his stomach and groin, the former thin and trim, the latter standing proud.  and then her gaze rose, lingering now on the mauve, almost purple Sitemarks which adorned his neck and clavicle, until he squirmed uncomfortably at her regard.

At last, at  _last,_ she raised her eyes to his, her brows cocking upwards again.  She raised her hand with one index finger extended straight up, then twirled it in a small circle.  

Impossible not to understand what she meant; Keris flushed deeply, but pivoted, allowing her to similarly peruse his back.  He closed his eyes and waited for a noise to come from her, any noise—either approval, or the other kind.  But it was not a noise, but a touch, which roused him from his trance-like contemplation of the cave wall:  a small, soft-fingered hand at his elbow, pulling him backwards.  He stumbled, but went, and soon found himself turned and pushed towards—

A fire!  But he hadn’t _set—_

Gruck stood nearby, resting against the sooty stone face.  Keris flushed, but met his eyes, nodding gravely in gratitude.  Although such features at such a height were hard to read, even for one not in Keris’s current condition, Keris thought they bore a trace of fondness, as an old nurse might bear for her now-grown charge.  He flushed at the regard, and dropped his gaze to the fire again.

The blanket from his pack was spread in front of the flames, and at a slight push from behind he dropped onto it, as obedient as a child.  Darcy joined him shortly, after shucking her own, close-fitting blue trousers.  She wore no smallclothes, either discarded along with her pants or never donned in the first place, and her hair, as per his earlier prediction, was in fact coming loose from its braid.  Still, she seemed entirely comfortable as she pushed him backwards, onto his back, and swung one leg over him until he was bracketed by her deliciously curvy hips.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Darcy's soulmark is under the arm on the left side her ribs, so difficult to see, but fairly recognizable; Keris's is on the outside of his right ankle, and while it's pretty recognizable to someone like Darcy, it's ambiguous enough to be confusing to any of the other people here who speak English (of which there are few, only one of whom has seen it, and she hasn't looked closely enough to read it.)


	6. Chapter 6

Darcy swung her leg over Keris’s hips and breathed deep. He still smelled like a mocha, only a mocha with leather, and, like, sex underneath it, and she was all but getting high off the taste of his belt in mouth. She gummed at it—she couldn’t seem to _stop_ gumming at it, like chewing a wad of gum that had long since lost its flavor—and ran her nails down Keris’s chest.

He arched _very_ prettily.

His head thrashed from side to side as he gasped beneath her, and she scratched him again, smiling delightedly. He blushed, but also whined and squirmed, which felt absolutely delightful since he was trapped between her legs. His erection—and she was looking forward to that erection: uncut, nice length, good curve, and a solid flare on the head—pressed against her ass, and she wiggled back against it mostly to see him gasp again.

It worked, too.

She leaned forward, pressing her breasts against his chest, and he moaned, letting his head fall backward. Her mouth literally watered at the sight of his neck—Sitemarks dotted his throat and collarbone area, so dark now they were well and truly purple, raised and pulsating. She wanted to bite, wanted to bite so badly that it was obvious the impulse wasn’t rational. But between his mocha-musky scent telling her he would taste delicious and the reaction she knew it would get, reason was totally in favor of biting him, too.

_Yeah, except for the part where I would be bound to a complete fucking stranger!_

Literally. _One complete fucking, coming right up…_

She ran her nails lightly down the side of his face, starting at the temple and curving around, through his hair—still fluffy, but somewhat damp with sweat—down the edge of his jaw, and onto his neck. He shouted aloud and arched when she dragged them over the sensitive Sitemarks, curving his spine upward sharply enough to lift himself and her together. He started talking, and she didn’t need a translation: he was begging, pleading. This guy, who had been obviously smart and so blatantly repressed that she half expected a British accent when he first entered the cave, was now out of his mind with lust, desperate for her to fuck him.

 _Yeah,_ she thought, although she didn’t say it aloud. _Yeah, no time like the present._

_Let’s do this._

She sat up, only to get distracted along the way by the pert, pink buds of his nipples; she was able to scrape her teeth over them, but she couldn’t bite down, unable to close her teeth around the gag, and after a second of trying she found herself growling in frustration.

Keris’s spine stiffened, and his words cut off abruptly; she jerked her head up, startled at the change, and saw him looking at her with concern.

“Sorry,” she mumbled.

Growling probably _was_ pretty concerning, in his state.

 _Their_ state. Darcy wasn’t un-self-aware enough to believe that _she_ was totally in her right mind, either; she was too aware of the way that, every time her eyes passed his Sitemarks, they lingered on the angry purple nodules for half a second too long.

Although her voice was too muffled to be intelligible he must have gotten the message, because he went back to whining impatiently at her. She brushed her lips over the nearest nipple twice, gently, then added a lick before rising up and groping behind her for his dick, the head falling into her hand like it wanted to be there. It was already slick, too, or the head was, at least. With a single pump of her fist, she was able to spread the slickness, an overproduction of pre-come characteristically found in male Omegas, easily.

She grasped him firmly, raising his erection and shifting around to brush it against her opening from behind. They both moaned at the touch, shockingly loud in the otherwise quiet cave, but _fuck_ that was sensitive! She repeated the gesture slowly, stroking herself with his length so that her juices oozed out and coated both of them. God, she was _crazy_ wet, and that was probably down to the pheromones because they had barely touched each other by this point, really, they hadn’t even kissed—

—but it didn’t matter, because he was slipping inside her, now, the flared head giving just a bit of a stretch. She pushed back, slowly enough to stop if she needed to but she really, _really_ hoped she didn’t need to, because oh, God, it was _good;_ just what she wanted now, holy shit, and when she finally stopped, her ass flattening out from where it pressed against his hips, it was just the right length, too: enough to ache, but not enough to hurt.

“Ohhh,” she moaned around the gag, “Baby, I am _keeping_ you.”

She ran her nails over his Sitemarks again and he tried to buck beneath her, but of course, pressed together as they were, he barely moved.

She held her palms out expectantly, wiggling the fingers in silent demand, and after a moment of dazed confusion—she _really_ couldn’t blame him for not thinking too straight right now—he placed his hands in hers. Immediately, she positioned them, crossing his wrists over his chest and then pressing against them, using them for leverage as she started to move.

His eyes rolled back in his head and he started to thrash beneath her, but immediately the realities of her weight and his position must have become clear, because he couldn’t really move in that position: no leverage. He thrashed even harder when he realized, the delicious sounds pouring from his throat becoming rough and desperate.

Darcy set a brisk pace, her movements more rocking than bouncing, but they seemed to do it for him. He threw his head from side to side, trying desperately to meet her at ever downstroke, wordless moans pulling from his throat.

He was beautiful, she realized, her heart breaking a little with it. The line of his jaw, the flailing silk of his hair, the taut muscles of his neck and chest and abs… He was beautiful, in the way that a snowy winter night can be beautiful, or a mountain, or a fire, or a lazy summer day with birdsong and a picnic.

She was on fire with lust, and she was happy to be fucking him, but it went deeper than that; she wanted to _know_ him, she wanted to own him. He was a mystery, and she wanted to figure him out. She wanted to sink her teeth into him until he was marked forever; she wanted to smell him on herself in the morning when she woke up.

…It was probably just the pheromones talking. She was mostly sure it was.

The spooling heat in her loins tightened and tightened before releasing suddenly, and her clench clamped down around him; he arched and threw back his head, hitting it against the stone with a thunk that made her very glad for the cushioning effect of the blanket. Her clench tightened and eased, tightened and eased, never loosening enough for them to separate but just enough to milk the seed out of him in long, oozing pulses. She lay against his chest, not meeting his eyes, and panted.

**Author's Note:**

> I routinely think about Keris, the guy in this, in other situations; he shows up in almost every original fic I write, but he's usually so different as to be unrecognizable. In particular, I tend to make him a mage—honestly, he's probably bitter about that—and I age him up: the youngest was 28, but usually he ends up between 35 and 45. 
> 
> Unfortunately, I do this SO consistently that I had genuinely forgotten how young he is in canon, which is sixteen. That won't do at all for this porny, porny fic, so I decided he started out on the Big Canon Road Trip at the end of his sixteenth year and then stretched the travel time some. He's eighteen at the start of this fic. Same with Mouse, when we get to her: she was 6 when the witches came for her, but she was also (in canon) six during the BCRT; that's not going to work. She's nine in this fic. (Mouse will NOT be a sexualized character, for those feeling particularly alarmed right now; I'm mentioning her here only because she's another character I've aged up.)
> 
> Likewise, the MCU timeline is fucked and this is an AU anyway, so I picked an age for Darcy and I'm just going to stick with it. She's twenty-five. In terms of maturity, given how grim Witch World is, that puts her and Keris about on par, with Darcy far more sexually experienced (I'm pretty sure Keris was a virgin in canon).


End file.
